Greece is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Situated on the southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast.

The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historic significance, the most famous being the Parthenon.

The Acropolis is the one historical site you can’t miss. You can take a tour or wander up there yourself but during the summer. Getting to the Acropolis is easy and more pleasant than ever because the large avenues which border the south and west of the site have been turned into giant pedestrian streets with cafes and restaurants and the walk is quite pleasant

The Meteora is a rock formation in central Greece hosting one of the largest and most precipitously built complexes of Eastern Orthodox monasteries, second in importance only to Mount Athos. The six monasteries are built on immense natural pillars and hill-like rounded boulders that dominate the local area.

It is located near the town of Kalambaka at the northwestern edge of the Plain of Thessaly near the Pineios river and Pindus Mountains.

Syntagma Square is the central square of Athens.The square is named after the Constitution that Otto, the first King of Greece, was obliged to grant after a popular and military uprising on 3 September 1843. It is located in front of the 19th century Old Royal Palace, housing the Greek Parliament since 1934. Syntagma Square is the most important square of modern Athens from both a historical and social point of view, at the heart of commercial activity and Greek politics. The name Syntagma alone also refers to the neighbourhood surrounding the square.

Elafonisi is an island located close to the southwestern corner of the Mediterranean island of Crete, of which it is administratively a part, in the regional unit of Chania. When the weather is fine it is possible to walk to the island through the shallow water. The island is a protected nature reserve. It is known for its pink sand beaches, created by tidal and wave-induced deposits of pigmented microorganisms living in a symbiotic relationship with native seaweed.

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George Giaglis

Director of the Institute for the FutureUniversity of Nicosia, Cyprus

Biography

Professor George M. Giaglis is Director of the Institute for the Future at the University of Nicosia, as well as a leading expert on blockchain technology and applications and advisor to many blockchain projects and technology start-ups. Prior to joining UNIC, he was Professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business (2002-2017), where he also served as Vice Rector (2011-2015). George has been working on digital currencies and blockchain since 2012, with his main focus being on new forms of industrial organization (programmable smart contracts, decentralized applications and distributed autonomous organizations) and new forms of corporate financing (token economy, crypto-economics and ICOs). He has been one of the first academics to research and teach on blockchain, having: designed the curriculum of the world’s first full academic degree on blockchain (MSc in Digital Currency at the University of Nicosia); led the development of blockchain credentialing technology that has resulted in the first ever publishing of academic certificates on the blockchain; taught on the disruptive innovation potential of blockchain, both at academic programs and in executive seminars worldwide; organized a number of prominent blockchain conferences and events, including Decentralized. Throughout his career, he has published more than 10 books and 150 articles in leading scientific journals and conferences, while he is frequently interviewed by media and invited as keynote speaker or trainer in events across the globe. He is the Chief Editor for Blockchain Technology at the Frontiers in Blockchain Journal and member of the Editorial Board at Ledger.

Steffen Staab

Steffen is full professor for Databases and Information Systems at the Universität Koblenz-Landau, Germany, and full professor for Web and Computer Science at University of Southampton, UK. He studied in Erlangen (Germany), Philadelphia (USA) and Freiburg (Germany) computer science and computational linguistics. In his research career he has managed to avoid almost all good advice that he now gives to his team members. Such advice includes focusing on research (vs. company) or concentrating on only one or two research areas (vs. considering ontologies, semantic web, social web, data engineering, text mining, peer-to-peer, multimedia, HCI, services, software modelling and programming and some more). Though, actually, improving how we understand and use text and data is a good common denominator for a lot of Steffen’s professional activities.